I recently sent the following letter to the New York Times:

To the Editor:

Timothy Egan accurately titled his recent gutter column (”Typing Without a Clue,” Dec. 7). Although meant as a reference to Joe the Plumber, it more aptly describes Egan’s elitist screed.

Egan childishly hurls ad hominems at Joe, calling him “no good as a citizen” for owing a small amount in taxes. I challenge Egan to find anyone who can understand, and follow, our entire 70,000 page tax code. Is he prepared to hold Charlie Rangel’s far more serious transgressions to the same standard, or is his ire reserved for uppity peasants? He also makes the sophomoric argument that Joe is “no good as a plumber” because Tim the Snob isn’t satisfied with his government certification. By this standard – or any other for that matter – Egan is no good as a columnist.

Sincerely,

Brian Garst

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Yesterday I predicted a leftist assault on Joe the Plumber.  You simply do not challenge The One without facing the wraith of his accolades.  WaPo goes for the red herring, hoping to distract from the issue by questioning Joe’s plumber bonafides:

Joe the Plumber’s story sprang a few leaks Thursday. Turns out that the man who was held up by John McCain as the typical, hard-working American taxpayer isn’t really a licensed plumber. And court documents show he owes nearly $1,200 in back taxes.

…The burly, bald man acknowledged he doesn’t have a plumber’s license, but said he didn’t need one because he works for someone else at a company that does residential work.

But Wurzelbacher still would need to be a licensed apprentice or journeyman to work in Toledo, and he’s not, said David Golis, manager and residential building official for the Toledo Division of Building Inspection.

State and local records show Wurzelbacher has no license, although his employer does. Golis said there are no records of inspectors citing Wurzelbacher for unlicensed work in Toledo.

Typical liberal reasoning.  If you don’t have government papers, you aren’t legitimate.  I don’t want to get into the folly of government licensing and how it’s used to protect businesses from competition rather than consumers, but it’s enough to point out that a government certificate is not the determinate of one’s occupational status.  Nor does this have anything whatsoever to do with Obama’s declaring he wants to “spread the wealth.”  His statement is no less socialistic for Joe not having a plumber’s license.

Liberals on the web have, not surprisingly, taken an even lower road, and are engaged in a furious verbal assault (via Moonbattery):

Joe the Plumber is the typical selfish American voter who only cares about his own personal situation and not the big picture. […] Guys like these disgust me.

[M]aybe Joe [the] Plumber and Joe Sixpack can meet up in Northwestern, New Hampshire with the Mooselady and talk about faucets!

I bet JOE PLUMBCRA^K has a criminal background. […] How was it that McCainRat knew what JOEA^ssCra^k said to Obama, if he was none other than a PLANT?

So the white guy is the only measure of this economy? I’m so sick of everyone else’s welfare being measured against the white guy.

You know what, screw Joe the plumber and Joe the electrician.[…] They all wanted to drive BMW’s and buy homes that were bigger and more expensive at 25 than their parent’s homes that they bought at 50.

Screw those guys! They won’t to do well for themselves, and they must be stopped!  Yeah, Obama will do wonders for the economy, let me tell you.

Also from Moonbattery:

Having moved beyond sneering at him for probably liking beer at Huffington Post, the vermin at Daily Kos have tried publishing his address, tacitly encouraging Obamunists to throw Molotov cocktails through his windows or terrorize his family.

But the attack isn’t limited to sallow adolescents conducting a People’s Revolution from their moms’ basements. Left-leaning officials are moving to drive Wurzelbacher out of work on bureaucratic technicalities as punishment for not extolling their messiah’s smash and grab economic policies.

Welcome to the new tone of Hope and Change.

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Joe the Plumber has presented a bit of a problem on the way to Obama’s coronation. Faced with an unanticipated question about his tax policy, Obama let the socialist cat out of the bag:

Joe is Joe Wurzelbacher, a Toledo, Ohio plumber who showed up at an Obama rally to challenge the Democrat’s tax policies. Wurzelbacher wants to buy the business where he works but says he’s worried that, if the company is successful, he’ll face higher taxes. Obama has said that he’ll cut taxes for those making under $250,000 but that people making more than that would see an increase.

“It’s not that I want to punish your success,” Obama told him in an episode captured on a TV camera. “I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too…I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

The government is busy spreading the wealth around enough already. We “spread the wealth around” when we give farmers giant subsidy packages. We “spread the wealth around” when we take from the young and give to the elderly. But at least, for once in the campaign, Obama has been honest about his agenda. His tax policy really is a massive new welfare program (not that he bothered to inform anyone he was running on a platform of undoing welfare reform). One can’t help but wonder, if spreading the wealth around makes everyone better, why haven’t all these programs ended, or even reduced, poverty?

On the contrary, “spreading the wealth around” means punishing economic success, which tends to discourage, big surprise, economic success. Of course, Obama only believes in spreading everyone else’s money around. His? Not so much. Between 2000 and 2004, the Obama’s earned $1.2 million in income and gave a paltry $10,770, barely more than 1%, to charity. Only when his Presidential ambitions forced him to atleast pretend to not be a hypocrat did Obama give 6% of his $1 million 2006 income to charity, though the largest single benefactor was Trinity United Church of Chicago, home of Reverend “I never knew he thought that” Wright.

But back to our friend, Joe.  Wanting to receive the rewards he is due from of his own hard work, rather than give it to Obama redistribute to political constituencies the “needy,” Joe has become an obstacle to the Obama campaign.  Obstacles are also targets.  I predict a furious left-wing assault.  Unfortunately for them, nothing they say about Joe the Plumber can erase Obama’s unguarded slip.

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